Stephencooks

Absorption Pasta with Scapes and Wild Mushrooms

   

This is the second week of my farm share and things are already getting good. Garlic scapes! I never even heard of them, and certainly never cooked with  them, but here they are in my bag of tender fresh green goodies from the hardworking farmers up the road. If you like challenges, this is one of the best reasons to join a farm share: unexpected and unusual ingredients that you never get at the supermarket.

The Epicurious food dictionary choked on this one, so I don’t feel so bad about my ignorance. Garlic scapes are the tender curling young stalks of hardneck garlic. Harvested in the spring, they are crunchy and garlicky, and, like garlic cloves, their flavor is mellowed by cooking. They can be chopped up and scattered raw on salad to add some crunch (with a nice sharp bite), used to make a flavorful pesto, or chopped and tossed with some buttered boiled new potatoes, among many other options.

I had some shitake, oyster and crimini mushrooms in the house, so I decided to combine them with  the baby Swiss chard from this week’s share and a nice absorption-cooked pasta, topped with seared curls of the garlic scapes. Some aged Parmeggiano-Reggiano  and a drizzle of truffle oil made it extra special. The earthy tastes of the chard and the mushrooms worked well with the still-crunchy and garlicky scapes. This was a great start to the second week of our farm share adventure!

Stir-Fried Chinese Cabbage with Garlic and Ginger

  

This beautiful Chinese cabbage was part of my farm share this week and I made the classic stir-fried cabbage with ginger and garlic. Light, incredibly fresh, it was a real pleasure to have on our table. I served it with warm Chinese Chicken Salad and white rice.

 

 

Baby Turnips and Sugar Snap Peas

  

The first week's bounty from our farm share was, as expected, mostly tender spring greens, with some cilantro and scallions. But tucked in the box were a little bundle of baby white turnips and a bag of sugar snap peas.

Turnips and peas are a great combination, and when the turnips are these tender, flavorful babies it's a match made in heaven. In this preparation, both are blanched for a few minutes in boiling salted water (I just dunked them in a pot of water I already had boiling for some pasta), then sautéed briefly with cilantro, lemon zest and breadcrumbs. Yum!

Braised Pork Butt with Herbs and Shallots

  

We're having another bout of chilly rainy weather here at the seacoast so our food mood turned to the sort of yummy comfort food that fills the kitchen with herby fragrance and warms our bodies from the inside. Pork butt, slowly braised with shallots, rosemary,  vinegar, sugar, juniper berries, tomatoes and thyme -- more typically a fall dish -- was my answer to this primordial need. It filled the bill, and the interesting sweet-sour quality of the sauce made it a hit all around.  Now if we could just get some sunshine around here!

With pork being bred as lean as it is today, the braised pork butt produces surprisingly little excess fat, but it still has enough fat to deliver a flavorful, moist and satisfying meal. The only trick to this dish is to keep the braising temperature as low as possible, as boiling quickly toughens the pork. Served with bok choi Italiano and pan-roasted potatoes.

Papaya-Ginger Bread Pudding with Lime

 

Regular readers have probably noticed that I've slacked off in the pace of my posting here at Stephencooks, and for this I apologize. A number of factors related to our move (a new kitchen, a new workspace, the distractions of setting up a new home) have conspired to alter my work flow and impact my output.

Part of the problem is that I got out of the rhythm of thinking about what to cook next all the time, working out recipes when I was supposed to be working, and in general being obsessed with ingredients, recipes and cooking in general. In trying to get back to that pleasantly high level of foodie life, I've been falling back on some old favorites to get the creative juices flowing again. Today it's bread pudding.

Last summer Alanna at A Veggie Venture asked me one day if I had any ideas for a tomato bread pudding, which resulted in Tomato Bread Pudding, Roasted Tomato Bread Pudding and Tomato Bread Pudding IV, followed by Pear Bread Pudding with Blueberry Caramel, Pumpkin-Ginger Bread Pudding and Chocolate Bread Pudding.

A bread-pudding hiatus was in order, I guess, but the other day, faced with a half a large red Caribbean papaya to use up, I decided to go back to the bread pudding gods one more time. This preparation is a particularly satisfying member of the BP family: it's not too sweet, so the flavor of the papaya comes through strongly, with hints of the ginger and lime to give it additional spark without taking over. The dramatic color of the papaya comes through, too, to make a simple but high impact presentation on the plate, and, as noted before, the technique of making the bread pudding from sticks of bread with the crust left on one end results in a dessert that is soft and creamy on one side of the spoon and nicely crunchy on the other side.

In short, this is another bread pudding winner -- and it's nice to be back in the bread pudding business. Watch for more, since as some have observed I like to keep working on variations when I get on a roll...